Blog Post

5 Celebrity Home Foreclosures That Nobody Saw Coming

by Staff Writers

With the housing market in the pits, celebrities are in no way immune to homeowner woes. The rich and famous are losing their homes to foreclosure. In some cases, the loss occurs because of carelessness of funds. Celebrities seem to exhaust their fortunes on sports cars, live-in personal chefs, and opulent mansions. It is common for a great deal of their purchases to be acquired through borrowed money. When a celebrity is doing particularly well, a sizeable paycheck can lead to costly impulse purchases. However, Hollywood is a competitive place. When a celebrity loses a bit of luster, they may find their income to be substantially less than it was in their golden years. Other celebrities foreclose on homes to simply cut their losses. Perhaps it wasn’t worth the multi-million dollar mortgage. It’s no easier for a celebrity to sell their home that it is for us — particularly in California, where a great deal of them reside. The value of a home can actually diminish with the lavish personal touches of the famous, such as life-size frescos of the celebrity painted in the dining room, or solid gold ceiling fans. Some celebrities can afford to simply walk away from these homes; after all, they have six more where that came from.

This starlet is suspected to have foreclosed on her Beverly Hills home worth $6.9 million as a final effort after attempts to sell it at $2.4 million less than the purchase price failed. After filing an array of lawsuits against the seller for undisclosed water damage and leaking problems, the short sale could be an indication that Rihanna can’t pay her mortgage. According to the singer, the 8,500 square foot home is a product of faulty construction.

Grammy-award winning R. Kelly faced a $2.9 million foreclosure suit on his Chicago mansion in July 2011 after not making his mortgage payments in more than a year. With nothing in the way of financial trouble to blame, Kelly is suspected of living on the whims of a rock star celebrity who simply quit making payments on one home when the opportunity to buy new, shinier toys (or mansions) presented itself. Kelly’s spokesman, Allan Mayer, was quick to point out that Kelly’s recent album Love Letter was quite successful.

Gibson was faced with a foreclosure suit over his multiple Malibu homes in 2010, around the same time of his media disgrace over anti-semantic remarks. Rampage Construction, hired to work on Gibson’s real estate investments, filed the suit after repeated attempts to settle an outstanding bill of a measly $12,000. Along with his recent divorce and custody battles, Gibson’s foreclosure struggles would indicate he isn’t living as glamorously as he once was. The home is now on the market for a staggering million dollars less than its purchase price.

Cage is an example of a celebrity who positively squandered his riches, living far beyond his means even as one of the highest paid celebrities in Hollywood. Cage foreclosed on his Las Vegas home in October 2010, but that hardly skims the surface of his extravagant overspending. In the early 2000s, Cage went on a spending spree, acquiring dozens of homes, automobiles, and even a private island. His manager, Samuel Levin, cautioned Cage that his spending was out of control, yet the celebrity continued to live in excess and now owes millions in taxes and has lost, in addition to his Las Vegas home, two homes in New Orleans, Louisiana worth a combined $6.8 million.

Perhaps the most recent and unexpected foreclosure belongs to actress Kristen Bell. Bell’s Hollywood home was foreclosed and thus auctioned off last month after the actress simply abandoned it to move in with fiancé Dax Shepard. The house was featured in InStyle in 2009 and vacated soon thereafter. Much like her celebrity friends, Bell seemed to shrug off her multi-million dollar mansion without much concern.